ARTICLES ABOUT LAW ENFORCEMENT BY DATE - PAGE 2

Sometimes readers send letters, emails or asides asking for answers to a question - and some reader comments just beg a response. Here are some from the past week and a half. "Why in the For the Record reports is there no longer any location listed? As part of a neighborhood watch group, we try and keep our neighborhood safe, but with no locations listed, it is hard to know if fights, assaults, burglary, etc., are in our area. " In January, information available to the Aberdeen Police Department, Brown County Sheriff's Office, Brown County Jail and Brown County Dispatch Center was unified by a new computer system from Spillman Technologies.

Most of the time, law enforcement is still able to find out who the source of harassing or threatening online messages are. "I would report any time there's something going on that makes someone feel uncomfortable about something on the Internet, especially younger kids," said Detective Tom Tarnowski of the Aberdeen Police Department. "Often times that kind of behavior can be considered illegal. " He said cyberbullying should be taken very seriously. "We've learned as law enforcement to always investigate anything that could be happening thoroughly," he said.

Today's question: The South Dakota Senate passed the school sentinel bill, which would allow school districts to decide to train and arm some employees. Would you like to see armed employees in your school district and, if so, who at the school should be the sentinel? I think it is a terrible idea to have armed sentinels in schools. This is not a job for school district employees. It is a job for law enforcement. The kind of training required is a full-time job and not something that a teacher can learn in a short class.

Area sheriffs said they don't mind giving schools the option to have a sentinel, but few sheriffs believe it will be widely implemented. Day County Sheriff Barry Hillestad said he personally doesn't like the idea of guns in schools because of the possibility of an accident, but he understands why some school districts might think it's necessary. "There are some schools in the most rural areas where law enforcement is quite a ways away," Hillestad said. In some areas of South Dakota, especially West River, the nearest sheriff's office might be 30 miles away from a school, he said.

The Aberdeen Police Department has identified suspects responsible for circulation of counterfeit money in Aberdeen. The Secret Service office in Sioux Falls is assisting the department in the investigation, Capt. Dave McNeil of the Aberdeen Police Department said. McNeil declined to release further details because the case is an ongoing investigation. Several counterfeit $5 bills were found at two convenience stores in Aberdeen earlier this month. The bills do not have the security watermark in the paper and can be detected with a pen designed to detect counterfeit bills, police have said.

Counterfeit five dollar bills have been discovered in Aberdeen. Several counterfeit five dollar bills have been found at two different convenience stores in Aberdeen, according to a release from the Aberdeen Police Department. The bills do not have the security watermark in the paper and can be detected with a pen designed to detect counterfeit bills. Business owners are asked to report suspicious bills to law enforcement as soon as possible.

PIERRE - Law enforcement officials would be able to better stay abreast of advances made by underground chemists at the root of the illegal trafficking in synthetic designer drugs in South Dakota, under legislation that is one vote away from final approval in the Legislature. The measure would add a general set of definitions for what are known as controlled substance analogues. They are chemical combinations that vary only slightly from prescription-only and or generally illegal drugs such as stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens and marijuana.

PIERRE - With each day that passes, the memory of the Sandy Hook school massacre grows a bit fainter. The shootings didn't happen in South Dakota, thank God, and so the emotional urgency eases a bit, too. The Legislature, however, still faces a big decision: Whether to allow local school boards to decide whether to have armed sentinels at their schools and school events. The House of Representatives delivered its piece of the decision last month by passing Rep. Scott Craig's legislation 42-27.

PIERRE - Three prominent advocates for legalizing marijuana in South Dakota made their cases to a legislative panel Thursday, asking that state judges be allowed to consider medical necessity as a possible criminal defense by people caught with 2 ounces or less of the illegal drug. South Dakota's law enforcement community rose in superior numbers against the proposal, however. The proposal came from two of their own: a policeman, Rep. Dan Kaiser, R-Aberdeen, and a retired police chief, Sen. Craig Tieszen, R-Rapid City.